Radioactive Hamsters
by Liros
Summary: It's been 5 years since Zim arrived on Earth. A lot can happen in that time. New alliances have been made, the Invader and his rival have both changed and grown, and the ceaseless march of life has gone on. Romantic pairings in later chapter. R&R please


**Title:** Radioactive Hamsters

**Synopsis: **It's been five years since Zim arrived on Earth. A lot can happen in five years' time. New alliances have been made, the Invader and his rival have both changed and grown, and the ceaseless march of life has gone on. There will be at least one romantic pairing in later chapters, but for now, it will remain undisclosed. Story does contain 3 OC's, though.

**Rating: **Rated K+ at the moment, but rating will possibly become T or M later, as action and drama picks up in the storyline.

* * *

Radioactive Hamsters – An Invader Zim fan-fiction

_Zim arrived on Earth five human years ago. While he has made little progress in destroying the Human race, he has, at times, inadvertently saved the planet he has desired to take over. However, very little has changed for him, and the humans who are constantly trying to thwart his dastardly designs. A few things have been altered, however. For one thing, as Zim found out, formulating a shrinking potion to turn Dib into a microscopic bug can easily backfire when Gir tries to make waffles out of it; and even more so when both you and your rival have to team up to create the antidote. In a cruel twist of fate, Zim's original, diminutive height was given a kick-start that resulted in, over the course of the last three years, a dramatic boost when he was returned to normal; he is now only a half-head shorter than The Tallest. It does make his ability to blend in with the humans easier now, for he must follow their rules if he wishes to stay incognito, and the height can be attributed, to the human mind, to the onset of puberty, and growth spurts. Zim has, like the humans, entered high school. Tonight, everything changes, though, when Zim receives a surprise transmission from the Tallest...  


* * *

_

Chapter One – The Invasion Ends

Zim was working in his base, adjusting the gears on this, tightening bolts on that. He could tell that by human time, it was just a little past one am, by the slight amount of fatigue he felt. It seemed that in the long, tedious years he'd spend on Earth, Zim had fallen prey to the circadian rhythm that all life on this planet had to obey the laws of. It had sickened him when he first found this out, but time had changed that, and he had accepted it for what it was; an inevitable part of an extended stay on this world. But soon, it would end. "Yessss..." Zim hissed through his teeth, clenching the wrench in his hand tightly, a smile spreading across his green face. "Soon, it will be complete... And nothing, not even the smelly Dib-human, can stand in my way!" He said, raising his fists over his head triumphantly, leaning back, preparing to launch into a victory laugh when Gir launched himself into the room, covered in sticky bubblegum, and stuck himself to the back of the Irken's head. "AAH! GIR! What are you doing? You fool!" Zim yelled, flailing, dropping the wrench at his feet as he flailed, trying to reach the furiously dancing robot plastered to the back of his skull.

Finally, with a little luck, he managed to seize hold of one of the robot's limbs, and with a tug, dislodged the malfunctioning Information Retrieval unit, pulling Gir, and all of the gum, fortunately, from the back of his head. "I baked you a cake!" Gir yelled, waving his little robot arms, stretching the bright pink gum, making it sag towards the floor. "Augh! Gir, you're FILTHY!" He said, and set down the wrench on a nearby as he made a face of disgust at the little robot. "It's chocolate cake. Chocolate and BUBBLEGUM!" Gir shrieked. Zim sighed as he made his way to the elevator, and up into the main part of the house. Over the years, he'd modified it, when, oddly enough, he made a human friend. A human female named Alysia, who was fond of programming, amateur robotics, and very artistic had come to the school. After being harassed greatly by Dib, who thought she was another Irken, and proving to not be once he hit her with a water balloon, which she stuffed him in a locker for, Zim became intrigued.

So the meddlesome Dib was not just annoying to him, too? This was fascinating. After establishing first contact, it was determined she was less annoying than Dib, less violent than Gaz, more rational than Gir, and, as much as he hated to admit it, smarter than even he, Zim. In fact, she even bewildered Dib at times with her knowledge. Though, one of Alysia's faults was that she seemed to collect random facts like a magnet collects metals, and seemed to be easily distracted from her plans at times. And she was a magnet for trouble, too. Her plans always seemed to go awry some how, even if it did not affect the scheme, or misfortune would befall her much more often. But she was undeniably brilliant, and she even shared Zim's interests; that is, world domination. "Humans are idiots." The dark-cerulean haired girl said with a smirk, arms crossed, leaning casually against the lockers as Zim interrogated her. "They need someone to keep them in line... to make sure they don't eat something to make them sick."

Tossing Gir into a strange, almost torturous looking device that looked like a strange, demented washing machine, Zim shut the door with it's little round window, and pushed a button; the machine started scrubbing the defective robot clean, much to it's delight; Gir yelled and cheered with delight as the machine scrubbed him, because as the little robot had put it, "It's like a tickly massage!" Zim leaned against the machine, and thought. Alysia was a great friend. She'd taught him how to make a better disguise, how to blend in slightly better with the populace, without becoming one of them, and even how to manipulate people, and get information from them in such a way that they felt helpful and useful. "You can rule this world easily, and have them eating out of your hand, metaphorically, if you just come off as wanting to _help_ them." Zim felt a smile spread across his face, and he clenched his fists, as his voice escaped from his throat, a low hiss at first, rising in volume slowly as he spoke, becoming excited as his idea formed before his very eyes. "Yes... I will produce a chemical to control the minds of the humans, and give it out as candy... Then, the entire human race shall do my bidding!" Zim threw back his head and laughed dramatically, enthralled with the idea.

The washing machine dinged, and a shiny, spotless, dry Gir was spat out from it. "Waffles are done!" Gir shouted, leapt to his little metal feet, and promptly ran face-first into the closed 'laundry room' door. The Irken sighed, shaking his head, a hand going to his forehead. Gir was truly a hopeless case. While Gir re-oriented himself with being vertical, a panel on the wall began to glow. Zim had a call? From the Tallest's ship? How unusual. For the past two years, none of his transmissions got through. He figured it had to do with the concerns the humans had over the increase of solar flares from their sun; even for advanced Irken technology, sun flares could be meddlesome. He pressed a few switches, and the glowing panel projected a hologram of adequate viewing size. But Zim boggled slightly when he saw that he was not actually looking at the Tallest; it was one of their workers, a female Irken with green eyes, in the coat of a technician. "Ah, um, would you be Zim?" She asked him lightly, as if afraid of being shouted at. "Yes, I am the mighty Invader Zim! So, tales of my greatness _have_ reached the Tallest, have they? That is excellen-" The female Irken held up a hand. "Ah, excuse me, but let me explain." She said. Zim's ruby-colored, pupil-less eyes narrowed slightly in suspicion at the green-eyed Irken. "Go on..." He said, analyzing the technician on the screen before him. "We flipped a coin, y'see, and I lost... well... I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the Tallest have decided to let you know the truth." She told him. "I have a memo here... " She punched a few buttons, and a transcript appeared along the side of the screen in Irkenese.

"Ah, here we go... 'Zim, this is your Tallest speaking. We have told this technician-drone to relay our words to you, for we are very busy. And frankly, we can't be bothered with you anymore. With Operation Impending Doom II ending, we figured it's time you know the truth. You are not an Invader, and you are not on a mission to conquer earth. In fact, earth was not even part of Operation Impending Doom II. We sent you to that forsaken mudball in the hopes that you would disappear, leave us alone, and possibly be found out and dissected by the natives, Zim." Zim's mouth fell open, and a noise of horror, wordless, squeaked it's way from his throat. The Irken girl glanced at him tensely, and continued. "But yet you've managed to muck things up even worse. We've lost countless good Invaders because of you, too many tons of snacks to count, and at least three more layers of skin than we want to. But the most important thing is this, Zim. You've been useful at times. Entertaining, even. But we think you've been fraternizing with the enemy, the humans, and become corrupted by them. So as far as anyone is concerned now, including you Zim, you are hereby exiled by the Irken species. We no longer recognize you as one of our kind. Any other, non-exiled Irken you encounter will kill you on sight, as we have placed a thirty million dollar bounty on your head if you attempt to go beyond the eighth planet of Earth's solar system."

Zim began to stammer, his green face a mask of confusion and pain. A human would be about to cry... But Irken do not cry normal, saltwater tears like humans. Their tears are a stinging, clear fluid best comparable to cobra venom; it could easily make a human ill, or kill them, depending on how they came in contact with it. "I... I..." The technician gave him a sympathetic look. "There's more." She told him, and continued reading. "And you should know something about your robot. We figure the G in his name stands for Garbage, because that is what we put in his head. His brains are a random assortment of what one of us had in our pockets at the time. Feel free to try and upgrade him, but I doubt it will do you any good. SIR robots only are helpful to Invaders, Zim. And you are not, and never will be one. Hope you die. Signed, the Tallest.' Oh my... I am so sorry." The technician-drone told him, her emerald eyes expressing concern. The connection snapped off into static, and Zim, trembling like a leaf in an autumn breeze, sunk to his knees, eyes squeezed shut to hold back tears, head bowed. This couldn't be. The Tallest would never...!

But no, he had just heard their words, relayed to him via another. As if to finalize this point, the wall panel control pinged, and out popped a transcript of the letter, on disk. Zim, fingers shaking, took the disk, and stared at it long and hard, the two black antennea on his head drooping in grief. Finally, with an anguished cry, he tossed the disk, causing the four-inch wide, perfectly square disk to hit the wall, and fall to the floor. Gir got up, and picked up the disk, looking at it briefly, before walking back over to Zim with it, who was now prostrate on the floor, sobbing. "Aww, somebody needs a hug!" Gir said, to which there was no response. This was not normal; Gir knew it was more common for Zim to shout at him. "Master?" He asked. Zim just shook his head, sobbing on the floor. It was over. All of it... for naught. The Irken was stranded, exiled, and not an invader after all... All hope was lost.


End file.
